


...and a knife in the darkness...

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: hard road [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Flashbacks, Gen, Illnesses, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Thor is trying really hard but Loki is not doing so hot, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 10:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20172532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: Thor and Loki have fled Asgard and are living as fugitives in the wilderness while they evade Odin's attempts to find them.But they're about to learn that Odin is not the only one looking for them.It is time for Loki to face what has happened to him.





	...and a knife in the darkness...

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Discussion of past torture and sexual assault, suicidal thoughts, and mental health issues (discussed by two people who are trying very, very hard, and are doing their best, but their best is flawed.)

Loki dozes, listening to the crackling of the fire and the sounds of the woods around them. He’s curled on his side on his bedroll, grasping his quilt tightly. He’s like a child again, with his favorite blanket, but even with his steady recovery he can’t seem to be able to conjure up shame at taking comfort in the object.

“I think we should find somewhere more permanent to settle down for a while,” Thor says quietly. “We’ve been traveling for weeks now.”

Loki hums, keeping his eyes shut. “I do not know if that’s such a good idea, brother. We’ve been _dodging Einherjar_ for weeks.”

“Yes, but you’ve your magic back. If we make a bigger jump, we may be able to stay longer in one place.” Loki just hums again. Thor’s hand settles in his hair, stroking it back. “You are feeling well, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine. Just a bit tired.” Thor’s fingers in his hair soothe him further towards sleep. “I would like to sleep in a real bed for once, I suppose.”

“We’ll find somewhere tomorrow,” Thor says softly. “Check the maps, hike into town.” For the first week and a half of their exile, Loki had still been intermittently feverish and perilously week, so they stayed in whatever seedy taverns and inns they could find where their identities would not be revealed, so he could rest in a real bed. Once he could stand, and walk on his own, they took to the mountains, camping out under the stars. There had been a few close calls with their father’s forces, but they’d so far evaded capture.

“You do feel a bit warm tonight,” Thor says. “Are you sure-”

“I am _fine_, Thor.” Loki cracks open an eye to glare up at his brother. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m fine.”

“You nearly _died_. Whatever illness plagued your magic nearly tore you apart. Forgive me for wanting to be sure you do not relapse.”

_Whatever illness_. Loki still has not explained. He had not explained that his magic had been abused and twisted beyond the Void, when the Mad Titan held him in bondage. The bonds had seemingly been broken at some point during the fight, or during his sickness, but the breaks and wounds on it remained. He knows he should tell his brother the truth of what had happened - and of the other threat lingering in the shadows. The _other_ reason they should not stay still for long. But to speak it is to make it real and he is too frightened and childish to face up to it.

And Thor is finally seeming to trust him again. He looks at him with care and warmth in his eyes, and Loki can’t bring himself to remind Thor of what had torn them apart in the first place. Not when he still felt shaky and unsure. Not when he still woke from nightmares of being near-death. Not when he still _needed_ his brother and couldn’t afford to push him away again. If Thor left him now, he doubts he would survive a week on his own.

Thinking of how he has hidden the Titan from Thor sends a pang of guilt through him. Thor has not pressed him in his recovery, only quietly cared for him in the weeks since they escaped Asgard. He had given up everything to save him, and Loki was still keeping secrets.

He reaches up and grasps Thor’s hand. “I know you are just worried. I am sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry about.” Thor smiles down at him and goes to tend the fire.

Loki falls slowly to sleep by the flickering glow.

He is woken in the pitch black by Thor’s hand pressed over his mouth.

“Shh!” Thor hisses. “There’s movement. In the trees. Our alarms were tripped. We have to go.” They quickly rolling up his bedroll and Thor hefts Mjolnir.

“I really wish you’d thought to bring my knives.”

“I thought you were dying, brother, forgive me for forgetting your knives.” They move quietly in the clearing, straining to hear. Loki’s heart is beating fast in his chest. He holds his magic close.

_They’re just Einherjar, just Einherjar, or maybe Sif and the Warriors Three have finally caught up to us, that would be something..._

Just as they are ready to leave, to run through the woods and evade whoever has come for them, a blast takes out a tree branch above their heads.

“Loki, move!” Loki grabs Thor’s arm and teleports them into the brush. Whoever has come for them does not lose their tail, keeping pace with them into the thick of the forest.

None of the soldiers who had come for them before has never attacked them so directly. They had all clearly been given orders to capture them alive but tonight’s attackers have no such orders.

Thunder rolls in the distance. Lightning strikes, paired with Loki’s magic. There are three of them, they finally determine, three figures in shadows. But they are no match for the two of them.

There is a dawning understanding, in the back of Loki’s mind. He watches as they aim for Thor’s head, his chest, but these assailants take care not to aim killing blows at _him_.

Odin would have commanded the opposite. He would have wanted Loki dead and his golden son returned unharmed. He probably believes Loki has Thor under his spell and would want him brought back to Asgard to be freed from the enchantment. If Loki died in the recovery attempt, Odin would have exactly what he wanted in the first place. Loki, dead; Odin, free from the embarrassment of having to execute him himself.

No. Odin would not direct his soldiers to kill Thor and capture Loki alive.

But Thanos would.

Loki’s movements grow clumsy. He’s dizzy, breath coming short, but between the two of them they manage to kill the three assassins.

In the aftermath, they stand, panting.

“Loki…Loki, are you alright?” Loki conjures a light, hand shaking and making the light tremble like candlelight. Thor comes to his side, touching his shoulder, his face. “You’re pale, brother, are you-”

“I’m fine,” He says but it comes out slurred.

“Were you hurt?”

Loki shakes his head. In the dim light, Thor goes to one of the dead attackers. He kicks him over onto his back.

“This is no Einherjar,” Thor mutters. “What in the Nine…”

Loki’s heartbeat is loud in his ears, drumming a beat of warning. He takes a step closer, then another, and looks into the face of his attacker.

_He remembers screaming. He remembers freezing to his core in the Void, and landing hard and painfully on Sanctuary and being pulled apart like an insect is pulled apart by a curious child. He remembers this man, a lesser member of the Black Order, laughing as he is held down and his body violated, as he begs for scraps of food, trickles of water. Pushing him harder when he finally earns his place and is given his mission. Watching with curiosity as the Other implants the tether in his brain, as his magic is twisted and bound and the pain spikes, threatens to snap him in half-_

He comes to with the feeling of icy cold water on his face. He sputters and gasps, slowly processing his own body first. He is not hurt, except for a dull ache in his joints. He is shaking like a leaf, teeth chattering. His face is wet, both from the water splashed on his face and tears streaming down his cheeks.

Then he processes that someone his holding his wrists in one hand, cupping his neck with a broad palm.

Sound bleeds back in. “Loki! _Loki!”_ Thor sounds terrified. “Loki, can you hear me? Tell me if you can hear me.”

“I can…I can…” His teeth chatter too badly for him to continue.

It takes Thor the better part of an hour to calm him down enough to stop the shivering. They’ve fled to the bank of a river, explaining where the cold water had come from. Thor builds up a fire to roaring and settles the quilt around Loki’s shoulders. Loki grips onto it with white knuckles, holding it to his nose and breathing in.

Thor brings him a cup of water. “Drink, brother.” And Loki obeys. “Loki, what _happened?”_ He shudders. “Loki, you have to tell me, if you recognized those attackers, they were not Einherjar, you have to tell me-”

“I _know!_” Loki cries. “I know I have to tell you, I know I have to tell you, but, but I can’t.”

“Loki, you _have_ to, we are in danger.”

“I know I put you in danger, I know.” He moans and shivers, dropping his head to his hands. “They were from the Black Order,” He finally says in a whisper.

“What’s…what’s the Black Order?”

He can’t help himself. He fixes his eyes on the fire and turns off the higher functions of his mind. “You wanted to know didn’t you? You wanted to know who controlled me? _They_ did.” He finds himself rocking back and forth, unable to stop. Thor doesn’t try to stop him either, just keeps one hand on his arm and his blue gaze level. “You wanted to know where I went when I fell, I went _there_. They called it Sanctuary. You wanted…you wanted to know what made me ill?” His breath hitches. “It happened _there_. I had lost my mind. Somewhere between finding out what I was and landing on Sanctuary after a long, long fall through the soundless, sightless Void. I can still feel it sometimes. When I’m falling to sleep. Like I’m still falling there. But I landed and they pulled me apart, to put me back together. I have guessed with the information I got afterwards, I spent a year there, at _his_ mercy...as they...”

“They…they tortured you?”

“They pulled me apart, to put me back together. That's what they do. To get rid of the weaknesses, the impurities, the sentiment. They made sure I was loyal to them, that I would bring them back the Tesseract from Earth and then they sent me with the Chitauri armies to capture Earth and retrieve the Tesseract. That was what I was supposed to do. They must be so angry. He does not like failure.”

“Loki, _who?”_

“Thanos,” He says it like it’s obvious. The world is blurring a bit at the edges. “Thanos, the Mad Titan. He is…powerful, thoughtlessly cruel and on a mission to…to collect things. He’s searching for things, throughout the universe, on some grand quest. He has a collection of Children, the Black Order, they do his bidding. He travels across the universe and he…kills _scores_, it’s always half.”

“Loki, you’re not making any sense.”

“I’m sorry,” He gasps, voice a thin whine. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to face it. I thought if…if I just didn’t say it...”

“Brother…”

“I have to say it now.” He suddenly grabs Thor’s arms, squeezing tight. “I fell into the Void. Thanos tortured me, he let his lackeys mutilate and rape me, and when I saw an opportunity to escape I took it, and I didn’t care who else I hurt, who else I killed to get my way. I hated you at the time and I don’t remember why. I wanted power, I wanted control, and I cared for nothing else, thought of nothing else. I’m losing my mind and you were wrong to take me from that prison. I am a monster who deserves to be caged, or dead, and you keep foolishly stopping the universe from being righted. Thanos and the Other said that if I failed them there would be no barren moon where I could hide from their vengeance. That they would…that they would make me long for something as sweet as pain.” He lets out a thin wail, grip on Thor’s arms shaking. “I was made ill by what they did to my magic. They twisted it, broke it, and then when Odin locked me away the bonds on the cells made it worse. Would have killed me and you should have let that happen!” Loki’s crying now, his breath coming in short hitching bursts. “I should have told you this in the cell before you saved me. I did trick you. Because I knew, if you knew what we were up against you would have rightly decided to let me die. I lied to you about the risks. I should have let you decide if it was truly worth it but I hid it from you to take advantage of your good nature, your sympathy. I brought you into danger and I lied to you for weeks and if you had any sense you would bash my head in with Mjolnir and bury my body by this river and go back to Asgard and tell Odin that you were enchanted-”

“Loki, _stop.”_ Thor’s eyes are glassy. He cups Loki’s face.

“This would not be so bad a grave site.”

“Stop. You’re not thinking clearly-”

“I _am-”_

“You are _not_. You were right about one thing, Loki. Your mind is not clear - it is _lying_ to you. You do not deserve death for this. It’s telling you you do when you _don’t_.”

“I do,” Loki sobs. “I wish I had never existed-”

Thor cuts him off. “_Stop!_ Do you want to know what I’m seeing right now? You’re rambling. You're not making sense. You’re afraid. You’re hurt. This is not the first time this has happened, brother. This is not the first of these…episodes you’ve had, since you fell. You think me a fool, you think me unobservant, but when you were locked away I did watch you. I watched when you railed against me, I tried to follow the threads of your thoughts and often found myself utterly lost. Not because you were spinning webs I was too unintelligent to follow, but because the threads unraveled almost as quickly as you spun them. You are right, brother. You have lost your mind. But that just means that you’re still sick.” Thor gives him an uncertain, watery smile, petting back his hair. “We’ve fixed the sickness in your body, it will take a far longer time to heal your mind. It’s _okay.”_

“It’s not, I lied-”

“Yes, I am upset that you hid this from me - because I wish we could have been better prepared. Dealing with Father, with the Einherjar, that is one thing. This is…” He looks down and Loki can see the processing gears of his mind, putting together the gravity of their position. “But I understand why you did it. You’ve always been…you’ve always been…” Thor has to pause to clear his throat. “You’ve always been so proud. Always. You hated asking for help, you hated being seen as weak, or in pain, or undignified. To be hurt like that, to be brought so low.” Thor cuts off. “We will take everything else in the morning, as it comes. For tonight, I am sorry. I am so sorry for what happened to you. That I wasn’t there to protect you, oh _Norns_.”

Thor loses the last shreds of his composure and the conversation ends for the night. In the morning, they will have a lot to discuss. They will have to change their strategy. They will have to come up with a way to warn others of Thanos’s intentions, to figure out how to mount a defense against him. They will have to find a way to put back together the shattered edges of Loki’s mind, that had been broken apart by the tearing down of the fundamentals of his identity, and then under Thanos’s pressure.

But for the rest of the night, Thor holds him in his arms and lets him cry out the pain in cathartic, wailing sobs until the sun has come up and Loki’s cried himself entirely empty. He sleeps for a few hours with his head pillowed in Thor’s lap. When he wakes, he feels like a burnt out shell. There’s a dull, constant ache in his limbs and joints, and he feels just as tired as when he went to sleep.

Thor is looking thoughtfully into the distance. He does not appear to have slept.

“Brother? What are you thinking?”

Thor blinks, bringing his attention back to Loki. He sees a glimpse of terrified, young-looking uncertainty on his older brother’s face before he gives him a shaky smile. “How are you feeling? You’ve got a bit of a fever back.” Loki shakes his head, turns his cheek a little into his brother’s lap. “I was thinking…”

“You were thinking what?”

The wavering expression of insecurity is back on his face. He rubs Loki’s arm. “I think we need to find a way to contact Mother.”

**Author's Note:**

> Whooooo boy, this happened. Hm. I guess this is what happens when you churn out fic at nearly midnight after a gin+tonic. Normally I'm not one to post fic I've written in less than 24 hours, but I'm about to get on a bus to go to a place with limited internet so I thought...why not? 
> 
> But yeah, this AU is continuing in short, no pressure installments! I know a lot of people asked for Frigga's POV of the first part, and I have a start on this one, but I was asked for a scene where they are attacked by Thanos's forces and Thor is like "so who the fuck are those OTHER people trying to kill us? Loki?!!" (Thank you @adhd-loki on tumblr for the ask prompt!) 
> 
> And then Loki has a nonsensical mental breakdown in the middle of the night and Thor spends the whole time being like 'wtf wtf wtf wtf'. Seriously, Loki is not making any sense. Writing the stream of consciousness bit was super fun, but I had to resist the urge to fix it up. I kept wanting to make it make sense but the point is that it doesn't make any sense, because Loki's completely unraveled. (So things like Loki 'manipulating' Thor to help him escape - which did not happen in the previous installment - was an intentional mistake! I'm not forgetting my own continuity, promise!) They'll have to have another conversation (or a series of short conversations) so Thor can get the actual truth out of him and not this rambling mess.
> 
> If you have other random ideas for a fugitive-Thor-and-Loki fics, feel free to leave prompts in the comments or in [my ask box on tumblr!](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/) (You can now do so anonymously - I apologize, I hadn't realized that anon asks were turned off.) 
> 
> And with that, I am off to two days of no writing, no internet. Ahh, I need the break.


End file.
